The Energy of Debauchery
1989: In the morning they read each other’s tarot
In the morning they read each other’s tarot. The devil presented itself as the outcome in her first reading. Her husband said they must do it over, that they had done it wrong, having mixed the Major and Minor Arcana. He said the first reading wasn’t valid. He wanted her fortune to be good.
She worked at home. He did not. After he left, she wandered around the house aimlessly. It was only April, yet ninety degree weather had scorched New England for three days. It had released a strange excitement within her. She was unable to concentrate on her work.
She wished to be working in her garden, sinking her hands into fertile soil, but it was too early. Instead she sat on the deck praising the sun — so welcome after months without it — continuously checking out the flabbiness of her knees, analyzing her thighs in the full length mirror in the bedroom, wondering if they were slender enough for shorts.
Distressed at their pale fatness, yet unable to get herself on her bike for her annual “shape up for summer clothes” routine and also, at the same time, unable to keep her hand out of the box of peanut butter Girl Scout Cookies which sat on the counter. “Damn Girl Scouts,” she said, the mouth-watering peanut butter melting against the back of her throat. “Wait until they hit…
